About David

A Little Introduction to David

Born to well-educated parents in Chicago as an autism-spectrum child, David Patten was repetitively misdiagnosed in the 1950’s, a time when autism was little understood. After a youth of a severe disorientation and isolation, the seriously dyslexic Patten made a living dealing drugs and engaging in other street-level enterprises. In his twenties he discovered his native genius in abstract conceptual mathematics which led him to a successful career as a businessman who worked debugging computer systems for major corporations and American military installations.

David’s deep sensitivity and insight gave him the capacity not only to maintain meaningful and affectionate human relationships, but enabled him to observe that his desperation and limitations need not define who he was. It was this understanding that eventually allowed him to accept his life and move beyond his identification with his human personality. Today he is the father of two grown, productive and happy children. He lives with his wife of 30 years, a physician, in Hawaii.

As it turns out, my true happiness is proportional to my yielding to the brokenness, not to my refusing to accept it or to my struggling to overcome it…” – David Patten from Dummy: A Memoir

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Endorsements

This wonderful book, “Dummy,” by David Patten is a true story of tragedy turned into triumph. But it is much more than a success story, it is a story that speaks to the eternal light of the Soul and how it finds its way through an odyssey of darkness and despair back to wholeness and freedom. In the end this story is a testament to the power of love and grace and how they can be found in the most unexpected of circumstances.

I have not found a book with such heart and spirit for a long time. This is one of those rare works that captures the universal in the particulars, as the author’s struggle for self-respect, and his rocky path to fulfillment, takes the reader on a winding journey from growing up to waking up. This book, about a life worth living, is definitely worth reading, and then sharing with friends and loved ones.

Your book is fascinating. I read it with the greatest interest. Your story is a real epic of triumph over adversities of every sort, but also a loving portrait of many interesting people… Your book is genuinely inspiring because it isn’t written as a self-help manual, though it could have been. Your modesty is more striking in some respects than your very genuine reasons to boast, which is also admirable. I felt better about myself after reading it, though I had none of your problems, and all the luck some people take for granted. Your insight that one is in effect a spectator to an Awareness that goes on with or without one is valuable and applies equally to all us human beans… Anyway, thank you, congratulations, and all the best with the publication. I hope that your story will be read widely and distributed to many. There are all sorts of reasons to delight in it.